


This Present Escalation

by HugeAlienPie



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse of Canon, Birthday Presents, Fluff, M/M, Steve Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:58:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My birthday is coming up. I've told Clint over and over that all I need is for him to be alive and in one piece. But somewhere along the line, he got it into his head that not only does he have to give me something every year, but that every year's gift has to be 'better' than the year before--by some strange measure of 'better' that only he understands."</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Present Escalation

**Author's Note:**

> As is my wont, this is a mix of adherence to and complete disregard for MCU canon. Proceed at your own risk.

JARVIS announced Steve's arrival at the door of Phil's Tower office at 8:40 on a Saturday morning, and Phil called him in with no small measure of curiosity.

Whenever Phil was around on the weekends, he spent Saturday and Sunday mornings from 7 to 9 in his home office, two floors down from the one he now called home, catching up on paperwork and prepping for whatever idiocy was next on the WSC's docket. Gradually, the half hour between 8:30 and 9 had become a time when members of his old teams dropped in to talk about issues that straddled the line between work and personal lives. So when FitzSimmons was on the outs or Stark tried hacking Natasha's strict anti-JARVIS security measures again because he clearly no longer valued his reproductive organs, Phil could count on one or all aggrieved parties showing up in his office. When Bucky first came to live in Avengers Tower, Steve was at Phil's door almost every day, but it'd been several months since Phil had seen him in that capacity, and he'd missed it.

"Good morning, Phil," Steve said as he slid into one of Phil's visitor chairs.

Phil nodded. "Steve." If this meeting were starting at 8:15, they'd be formal--Captain Rogers greeting Director Coulson, postures stiff, probably a lot of paperwork on the desk between then. At 8:40, they were Phil and Steve, two guys in blue jeans, relaxed and companionable. "What can I do for you?"

A faint crease appeared between Steve's eyebrows, but he remained relaxed as he said, "It's about Clint."

Phil took steady breaths and kept his hands open on the arms of his chair. "Is there a problem?"

Steve squinted at the ceiling and then back. "I don't think so. He's been…distracted lately. A little frantic. It's not impacting his work, and I want to make sure that continues to be the case."

Childhood hero or no, Steve got Phil's best disappointed glare full in the face. "And what did _he_ have to say about this?" Phil ran his personal life by a lot of rules, but the only one he held anyone else to was that issues with Clint needed to be worked out _with Clint_ first, rather than via end-runs to Phil.

"Ah." Steve pinked and gave Phil a sheepish smile. "He waved his hands a lot and said it was under control. It's just…" His eyes were aimed at the ceiling again. "I've noticed it gets…worse." He cleared his throat. "When you're around."

"Oh." Phil smiled ruefully and leaned back in his chair. "I think I know what it's about, then. My birthday is coming up. I've told Clint over and over that I only want him to be alive and in one piece. But he's got it into his head that not only does he have to give me something every year, but that every year's gift has to be 'better' than the year before--by some strange measure of 'better' that only he understands." Phil shook his head. "He worries about it a lot."

Steve took all of this in with his usual calm consideration. "When's your birthday?"

Phil grimaced. "Four days after yours."

Steve blinked. "In July?" When Phil nodded, he said dumbly, "It's _March_."

Phil grimaced. "Like I said. He worries."

Steve blew out a startled half-laugh. "Wow."

"Yeah." Phil smiled. "I think, in his mind, he's still 'making up' for the first present he ever gave me. No matter how many times I tell him it was my favorite."

"Oh?" Steve's eyebrow quirked up, and he leaned forward. "What was it?"

Letting more of his fierce adoration bleed into his smile, Phil pulled the arrow down from his bookcase and set it on the desk between them. "This," he said proudly.

Phil watched Steve's face with intense amusement. Steve's reputation--in and out of costume--was built on honesty and empathy, and those things simply couldn't coexist just now. "That's...quite a thing," he said at last.

Phil chuckled and ran a finger down the bristly plastic of the fletching. "It's okay," he said. "You can say it's hideous. But it's--Clint made this arrow. He joined S.H.I.E.L.D. in October. We weren't dating by the time my birthday came around, but we’d formed a tight team.” Phil ran his finger along the arrow’s shaft, a giant turquoise pencil that said “ _Bonjour_!” and was covered with culturally insensitive cartoons of drunk men in berets and obscenely busty women in “French maid” costumes. “He stole this stupid pencil from the Louvre gift shop.” Phil showed Steve the arrowhead, a green guitar pick that said “Graceland,” and ran his fingers again through the purple, green, and gold feathers of the fletching. “He found a mask on a sidewalk in Rio during Carnivale and ripped it apart for the fletching. Then these…tchotchkes—“ Clint had tied glass beads and souvenir thimbles and even a tiny plastic bust of Freud into the feathers. “It’s the tackiest thing ever. But every part of it relates to a mission we’d been on together. And if I needed to shoot it, it would fly true and hit its target.”

Steve smiled and stroked the fletching lightly, and Phil knew he got it. He didn’t doubt there were a few heartfelt, hand-made gifts among his own possessions.

"What did he give you for your last birthday?" Steve asked, and then Phil watched grim realization set in. "The last birthday you were together for," Steve amended quietly.

The mood didn't improve when Phil replied, "Vacation in Tahiti. The real Tahiti. I don't doubt that's where S.H.I.E.L.D. got the idea."

Steve's lips turned down deeply at the corners. "Why did--I mean, the cellist--"

Phil's shoulders tensed, and his fingers twitched on the novelty pencil. "A gift from Hydra. The technician responsible for planting the altered memories in my mind during Project T.A.H.I.T.I. was one of theirs. She realized that if she deleted my memories of my relationship with Clint, it would sever my personal loyalties to both Strike Team Delta and the Avengers, further isolating me and my new team. Audrey was my last serious relationship before Clint, so the substitution took a long time to feel strange." He shook his head in grudging admiration. "Brilliantly done, if I'm honest."

Steve's expression turned thunderous. He made no secret of his feelings about that time in Phil’s life. "What's been done to you, Phil--both of you--by Hydra _and_ S.H.I.E.L.D.--"

Phil nodded. "To all of us. But S.H.I.E.L.D.-- _Nick_ \--trusted both of us when we'd given him no reason to do so. I owe him the same trust back. At least for now."

Steve sighed and shook his head. "Sometimes I think you're the best of us all, Phil," he said quietly.

Phil flushed and took a long time putting the arrow back on the shelf. "So," he said when he turned back, "Clint's going to be out of it for a week or two, but as soon as he comes up with an idea, he'll be fine." He grimaced. "I'll talk to him about being so distracted."

Steve tilted his head, and a parade of ideas seemed to flash through his eyes. "You know what?" he said. "Let me talk to him."

"No, Steve, you shouldn't--" Clint hated having his personal life _handled_.

"It'll be fine, Phil. I promise." Steve smiled. And Phil had never been a guy who could say no to Captain America’s smile.

*

 **[to Clint]** Do you and Phil have a wedding album?

 **[from Clint]** y?

 **[to Clint]** I hear you're a man in need of a birthday present.

 **[from Clint]** ur floor in 15

*

Steve winced at the sound his spine made when he straightened it. Super-soldier or no, he'd been leaning over his drafting table for too long, and his back was making sure he knew it. He'd just gotten so absorbed in the shading of Clint's hair.

A warm hand settled at the top of Steve's spine, firmly massaging the knots on either side. "Look at you. So earnest."

Steve rolled his eyes. "A nice gesture for a friend. I know you're familiar with the concept, even when you're pretending to be a heartless asshole."

Bucky scoffed, but the metal finger tracing gently over Phil's face in the portrait gave him away. "Got seventy years where my only memories are of killing people," he said quietly. "I'm not the guy you knew."

Steve lifted Bucky's hand from the paper and rested it against his cheek, leaning into it. "You're always that guy, Buck. Just because other things got dropped on top of it, that doesn't change."

The flesh fingers at Steve's neck twitched, but the metal ones at his cheek held perfectly still for the space of three heartbeats before Bucky sighed and withdrew all contact. "Keep telling yourself that," he murmured. "You got a sappy picture to draw."

*

Phil stared at the work of art in his hands and tried to get his brain online enough to offer Clint and Steve the thanks he desperately wanted to give them.

His birthday started with four hours of acting professional while Clint's mission in Juarez went spectacularly to shit. Then nine more hours of acting professional while Clint's plane made its way back to New York. And then, finally, five minutes of saying "fuck it" to acting professional while he hugged Clint so tightly he heard ribs creak.

They'd planned to go out. Every Tower resident had a standing reservation at their favorite restaurant--a perk of making it into Tony Stark's inner circle--but Clint could barely stand on his own, and his blinks had grown longer and longer. So the instant Medical (which, all right, currently consisted of two doctors and five nurses, but at least they were all trustworthy) confirmed they'd looked Clint over and cleared him for discharge, Phil had bundled him into a taxi and back to the Tower. One shower and one bowl of leftover chili later, Phil was pouring his husband into bed, firmly overriding Clint's insistence that he had to give Phil birthday sex.

Phil had been in the middle of a strange dream about eating mushrooms with Agent Frank and the head of Stark Industries' legal department when a sudden gasp and a tight grip on his arm jolted him awake. "Clint?" he asked, instantly on alert and reaching for the sidearm strapped to the headboard.

"It's 11:30," Clint informed him. "Which means it's still your birthday, which means get your ass out of bed and open your present."

Phil hadn't understood why Clint insisted on JARVIS inviting Steve and Bucky down. But once everyone was seated, Phil and Clint on the sofa, Steve in an armchair with Bucky perched on its arm, and now that Phil had Clint's present unwrapped in his hands, it made sense. Because this gift--Phil's throat tightened, and his eyes felt suspiciously damp.

Clint and Phil’s wedding photographer, hired by Phil’s mother, of course, had been a dour man who didn't approve of candids and took only the stilted group photos his mother insisted on, every tableau posed and unreal, every expression embarrassed and uncomfortable.

But he'd had an assistant, a motor-mouthed teenager who had bonded with terrifying speed and adherence to Natasha and had spent the afternoon lurking behind potted plants at the reception hall, catching unwary guests at their most genuine and unguarded (even the S.H.I.E.L.D. employees, most of whom had been unaware they had a "genuine and unguarded" setting). A week after the end of Phil and Clint's hastily aborted honeymoon (goddamn Doombots), a flash drive arrived in the mail, any one of the 500 photos on it capturing the essence of their wedding day more perfectly than all the "official" photos combined.

This photo was Phil’s favorite. It had happened during the toasts. Nick's, maybe, or Mel's. Steve's exquisite charcoal drawing didn't encompass everything in that frame, but Phil's mind easily reconstructed the moment. Phil had been sitting sideways in his chair, one arm resting on the table, the other draped across the back of Clint's chair. Clint sprawled backward with his back to Phil's chest and his head on Phil's shoulder. Clint was looking toward the speaker, but every inch of his body telegraphed his awareness of Phil. It was obvious in the curve of his spine, the tilt of his neck, the press of his palm against Phil's knee.

There weren't many pictures of Phil in the world, and he was sure not a single other had caught him looking this open. He was smiling, gazing at Clint with his eyes crinkled at the corners and the lines of his face softened. He looked every bit what he's been that day: a man in love, delighted to be beside this man, pledging himself to a new phase of their life together. Some S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives felt romantic and familial connections made them weak, made them easier targets. Phil believed those connections showed their enemies exactly how deep their loyalties ran. _We are not alone. Wound us and we will be tended. Capture us and we will be rescued. Strike us down and we will be avenged._

With nothing more than some charcoal and an eraser, Steve had conveyed all of that. It was as clear on paper as it had been in Phil's heart and mind at the moment the picture was taken, and Steve's quiet pride at his work sweetened the gift that much more.

"Steve, thank you," Phil said, smiling across at him. "Your work is excellent." Steve's smile was a bit shy, but he met Phil's gaze and nodded. Bucky grinned delightedly down at him from the arm of the chair. Phil turned to Clint and kissed him, long and sweet. "And you," Phil murmured when he pulled back. "This is the most perfect gift anyone's ever given me. Thank you."

Clint shrugged. "It was mostly Steve. He had the idea, chose the photo, did the work."

"It was a commission," Steve said with a roll of his eyes. Phil raised an eyebrow at him. "After you explained the arrow, it seemed like a logical extension."

Clint gave a goofy grin. "Aw, babe, you showed him the arrow? You're sweet." He kissed Phil's forehead obnoxiously, but his cheeks were pink and his smile was broad.

Laughing, Steve lifted himself gracefully from his chair, pulling Bucky up with him. "Okay, we're going back to our floor. Phil, I'm glad you like the drawing. Happy birthday."

"Thank you, Steve. Good night. Good night, Bucky."

Bucky nodded. "Coulson." He pointed at Clint. "Get some damn sleep, Barton. I'm not gonna go easy on you at the range tomorrow just because you were giving your husband birthday sex." Steve sighed and tried to shove Bucky into the elevator, but Bucky held the doors open with his metal arm and leaned back into the apartment. "Great gift, Barton, no kidding." A wicked grin split his face as he added, "Can't wait to see what you come up with next year." The closing elevator doors couldn't completely block out his cackling laugh.

" _Barnes_!" Phil snapped.

Clint paled and thumped against the couch cushions, groaning, "Aw, birthday, no."

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Coulson!
> 
> [I do the tumbly thing.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/hugealienpie)


End file.
